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Page Turners: Writing

April 01, 2015

This is a brand new linky and my very first go at one. Here's hoping it works as planned!

Not sure what a linky is? A linky, also known as a link up, is a chance for bloggers to connect their posts at the end of another blogger's post so that readers can read multiple posts on a related topic. Sometimes bloggers will link up products rather than blog posts, like the link up hosted by my friend Lauralee from The Language Arts Classroom, a weekly linky on Sundays of resources for secondary teachers.

This linky, hosted on Wednesdays, will feature great blog posts that I have read or written connected to a weekly topic. I would love for you to join the link up with a newer or older blog post that you have written or read. If you are adding one of your own, please include the linky button above and a link back to my blog in your post.

Page turner #2, Writing With Colors, is from Mandy of Caffeine and Lesson Plans. The post describes how to use colors to identify the different parts of a constructed response. This strategy is a great way to help students visualize what they have or don't have present in their writing. Plus students love to highlight and this is highlighting with a purpose :) Students could use the same colors to annotate a sample text.

Thesis Statement Throwdown is page turner #3. This post from Caitlin Tucker's blog (AMAZING, you must follow her) explains how she has students collaborate to write awesome thesis statements. She gives the students a prompt, groups have five minutes to write a thesis, and then she randomly chooses two groups to "compete." Dramatic music plays as the students post the thesis statements up on the board, the teacher edits them as necessary, a winner is declared, and then repeat with a new prompt.

Jackie of Room 213 just posted this page turner, Getting Ready to Research. It is short, but a great approach to writing research papers and includes a free resource from her TeachersPayTeachers store. As a teacher, I think I might hate research papers just as much, if not more than my students. Many expect to be able to craft a thesis without knowing anything about their topic. Whether you are assigning a topic or students are choosing their own, have students create an outline of what they know about a topic as well as the information they will need to gather so they are researching with purpose.

This last page turner is one of my own blog posts, the first in a series of ten posts about writing and the Common Core. Even if your state has not adopted the Common Core or has already dumped it, this series is full of general best practices for teaching writing. This post explains how the writing standards (like all of the Common Core standards) build upon each other. Later posts discuss the gradual release process, the three types of writing: informational, argumentative, and narrative, research, and assessment of writing.

I hope you found some new ideas for your classroom and maybe even a new blog to follow. Be sure to check out other blog posts linked up below and come back next week for some great posts about hands-on learning in the classroom.